Pages

Sunday, 17 February 2013

Formula 1 Betting Markets: Part 2 - Podium Finish

The 'Break Even' odds for each driver in the Podium Finish market

Last week I analysed the odds you would need to break even if you were to place a bet on a specific driver at every race of the season in the Winning Driver market.

All in all, despite being understandably the most popular betting market, you would probably have to say that the Winning Driver market was also one of the most difficult to make an educated profit from, especially given the unpredictability at the start of the season.

Next up, let’s take a look at the podium market. Just to reiterate my point from last week, I’ve used the number of podium finishes to calculate the odds for the ‘break even point’ from a betting point of view. By this I mean if you were to place a bet on a driver at every Grand Prix of the season, the odds at which the driver would have to be priced at every race to ensure you broke even over the course of the season.

Of course past form is no guarantee of future success, so these statistics don’t really mean a great deal and might prove to be totally irrelevant in 2013, but I thought I would publish them anyway as a matter of curiosity.

Here are the results…

Driver

Podiums

Break Even Odds

Fernando Alonso

13

1.54

Sebastian Vettel

10

2.00

Lewis Hamilton

7

2.86

Kimi Raikkonen

7

2.86

Jenson Button

6

3.33

Mark Webber

4

5.00

Sergio Perez

3

6.67

Romain Grosjean

3

6.67

Nico Rosberg

2

10.00

Felipe Massa

2

10.00

Kamui Kobayashi

1

20.00

Michael Schumacher

1

20.00

Pastor Maldonado

1

20.00

In the run-up to the end of the season, Fernando Alonso went on a remarkably consistent run of seven podiums from eight Grand Prix and when you also consider that he tended to qualify slightly further down the order and then make up places during the race, you could generally get generous odds on Alonso in the podium market if you waited until after qualifying before placing your bet. Fernando Alonso was therefore an excellent podium bet over the course of the 2012 season.

Sebastian Vettel was often priced shorter than Alonso in the Podium Market and yet over the course of the season it was Alonso who was on the podium more regularly. It therefore illustrates the point I made last week that bookies tend to rank drivers in a similar order for each betting market, even though certain drivers can be sporadically brilliant whereas others are consistently solid, meaning certain drivers are better suited to some markets than others.

Further down the list, Sergio Perez managed three podiums before his move to McLaren was announced, and he was generously priced on each occasion, meaning a decent return if you backed him from the start of the season and then knew when to stop.

That’s the Podium Market covered. Next week I’ll go over the 'break even odds' for the Top Six market.